What counts as a contact against my plan?

The number on each plan

systeme.io's wording is that each plan has a limited number of contacts that can be managed by the user. Its restriction article calls the free plan Freemium and the pricing page calls it Free. Same plan.

To see where an account stands, click the profile picture, then Settings, then My plan.

What creates one

Anything that puts an email address into the contact list. systeme.io lists those routes in the negative, when describing what a restricted account can no longer do: forms, manual entry, imports, automations, Zapier and the API.

Adding a contact by hand needs two things, an email address and a language. A tag can be attached at the same time and is optional.

The email address is the identifier

On an import the email column is required, because it is the primary identifier for each contact. A form that collects no email address captures no lead at all.

That is also why systeme.io's import guidance asks for repeated email addresses to be taken out of the file first, so one person does not arrive as several entries.

What the documentation does not say

Two gaps, and both of them change the count.

• Unsubscribed and bounced records. No page says a contact stops counting once it is unsubscribed or marked as bounced. The documented fix for an account over its limit is to clean the email list, or to delete contacts by other criteria.
• Students. The pricing page lists unlimited students on every plan, alongside the contact limits above. Nothing states how a student who is also on the email list is counted.

What happens when the number is passed

Nothing at once. A pre-restriction period runs first: three warning emails, one a day, plus an alert on the dashboard. Upgrading or deleting contacts during those days ends it.

If no action is taken by the fourth day, the restriction is applied automatically, and what follows depends on the plan.

On a paid plan the subscription is upgraded to the next tier automatically, so nothing stops. Going back to the old plan means removing the excess first, then asking support for the downgrade.

On the free plan the account is restricted. Opt-ins and payments stop working, no new contact or student can be added by any route, and new sales cannot be processed. On the email side, new newsletters cannot be created, campaigns pause, and test emails are disabled. A scheduled newsletter whose send date arrives during a restriction loses that date permanently.

Nothing is deleted

Content is not automatically deleted when an account is restricted. The pricing page describes the same situation after a cancellation in different words: the account reverts to the free plan and contacts above the limit are archived rather than deleted.

Two pages, two ways of putting it. Both say the contacts are still there.

One thing does eventually remove content, and it is not the limit. An account with no login and no activity for 6 months may have its content permanently removed.